Genealogy Chat

Someone has nabbed my entire tree !! What would you do ? Lin x

I never open my tree on here. I just send reports about the part of my tree the enquirer was interested in. Have they put any living people from your tree on their tree? If they have you can ask Genes to get them removed. Put it down to experience, there's not many of us that haven't been burned! :-( Cheers, Horatia

A large number of people in the tree are still alive. How do I go about this diplomatically, as this person is a distant cousin ? Lin.

Perhaps you should write her a polite email and ask her if she would mind removing your living relatives from her tree. Remind her about the rule on GR if she wasn't aware of it. Probably the best advice I can give you is to put as few living relatives on your tree as possible - there's only me on my own tree on here. After all, most of us come on here to go back in time rather than explore the present. I hope your relation is amenable and doesn't have her feathers easily ruffled. Cheers, Horatia

I'll just put my two'peneth in As Horatia knows I tend to side on the lets share our info, within reason, camp. What is the problem with her adding the details that are common to you both to her tree?

What you do is send a very gentle message asking her/him to please remove your living relatives from the tree and remind them of the rules. Do NOT do as I did and send an irate message because the person concerned may have acted on the assumption that having opened your tree to them you were perfectly happy to have them copy it. This it seems is the general assumption. IF you are unhappy about it then open your tree with provisos.ie that they only copy dead people or those directly linking your tree to theirs. We learn from experience. M

Hello Linda I'm afraid I must disagree with Horatio about most of us coming here it find the past. A large part of the fun of this site is making contact with your living relatives which is difficult to do any other way. Having said that if you are uncomfortable with people block copying your tree definately select the 'hide living people' in your account options. I open my tree to anyone you is a relation and I would say that if a living person appears on your tree then the person who copies your would assume the uploader of that tree has acquired their permission. I have had people send me their complete info by email asking me to leave certain generations off. If you want the living people removing from this persons tree though email them as someone did to me who had living relatives on initially but changed their mind (months later) and asked me to removed them. I went through that person's tree again and complied with any that had been blanked but definitely be polite about it I sure if they will be aware of the sensibilities. All the best

Hi Michael, I have also found living relatives through this website. But I have found more dead than live ones! Don't mind finding either variety! ;-) Cheers, Horatia

If you put living people on your tree, you need to have their permission to do so. That permission cannot be passed on to a third party. Genes will remove the living people if you ask them to. OC

I do not have a problem with others using the information on my tree to put on their own, as long as we are actually related, that is. Some of the information i have on my tree has been acquired from others (with their consent , of course). I usually ask people if i can use the information from their tree. I really cannot see the problem with sharing.

If you read the first post, Linda was saying she was worried about living relatives being copied over. I send reports because why should I show a tree of over a thousand people to someone who is (or should be) only interested in a dozen or so people? Some people on GR have been known to copy people who aren't their relations - which is why I personally prefer sending reports - each to their own. :-) Cheers, Horatia